Thursday, November 29, 2007

Yep, he's "wisely leading humankind toward the victory of the cause of independence":

General Secretary Kim Jong Il enjoys highest praises as the great man, political leader and famous person ranking first in the world for his great ideological and theoretical feats and wise leadership, noble personality and virtues.

In the last century the "Eurasia Joint House" Association in Russia acclaimed Kim Jong Il who was wisely leading humankind toward the victory of the cause of independence as "Man of the Year, 1994" and the Development Supporting Association and the Development Promotion Association in Peru as "Man of the Year, 1997".

World media are becoming louder in the 2000s in praising him as the most prominent leader.

The Intellectual Research Group put his name on the top of the list of 10 famous persons in the present-day world.

"Al Ahram" and "Al Akhbar", Egyptian newspapers, listed him as "Man of the Year, 2006."

The Iranian paper "Tehran Times" called Kim Jong Il "the most famous person of the world" and the Russian papers "Patriot", "Byvor" and "Poditiya" highly praised him as "a great man", "a consummate politician of the present times" and "the world's brilliant commander of the 21st century".

The U.S. magazine "Time" praised him as the most outstanding statesman among the world's famous politicians in 2004 and an excellent leader in 2006. And this year it listed him as the leader who has the biggest influence on the change of the world and the best reputed leader in the world.

In the opinion poll held in the United States for selecting world's famous persons and deciding their ranking, most of the pollees put Kim Jong Il on the top of the list and defined his character as strict principle, superb diplomatic talent and outstanding commanding art.

An Internet site of China extolled Kim Jong Il, saying his decision and practical ability, humorous sense and talent were beyond the imagination of the West.

The Gaza-based Palestinian government (Hamas) on Thursday renewed its rejection to the UN resolution No. 181 on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of its adoption, calling it a resolution of partition.

"Resolution of partition"? How dare they!

"Palestine is one unified geographical unit, and can never be partitioned or sliced by resolutions or agreements," said a Hamas statement sent to the press on the occasion of the anniversary, stressing "there is no compromise on the Arab and Islamic characteristics of Palestine."

Hamas said that UN is responsible for issuing the unfair resolution 181 which divided Palestine and for the suffering and pain the Palestinian people had passed over the past 60 years.

"The resolution legalized the partition of the lands of Palestine between its legal residents, who were expelled out of it by force, and the illegal new comers of Jews and Zionists," said the Hamas statement.

It added that according to the resolution, "the Jews would get 56 percent of the land, while its legal owners get 44 percent of Palestine.

"This anniversary of partition coincided with Annapolis conference. The United States wanted through this conference to eliminate the Palestinian cause in order to complete the chapters of conspiracy," said the Hamas statement.

In the statement, Hamas pledged to continue armed resistance against the usurper Zionist regime.

"We are determined with the help of Allah to uproot this cancerous tumor (Zionist regime) by armed resistance, no matter what cost of blood and sacrifices we will pay. What has been taken by force should be regained by force," read the statement.

Wednesday, November 28, 2007

You may remember the story that I called the Glendale tree fine massacre. It seems that the great and magnanimous government of the Glorious Municipality of Glendale has declared a general tree-crime amnesty on behalf of the fortunate but unworthy perpetrators. From the Collard's website:

Today we received this notice from the Glendale City Attorney. It was also read aloud at the Glendale City Council meeting tonight. It seems that Glendale City Council has decided to drop the pending fines while they review the ordinance.

You can't go anywhere in Palestine without tripping over neutralized conspiracies. From IRIB:

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said here on Wednesday that the present scene of Palestine is no more a place for compromising and weak politicians affiliated to the Zionists.

Addressing a group of Basij (volunteer) forces of the Presidential Office at the end of a cabinet session, he said, "Today the Palestinian nation has made its decision and the Palestinian youth and resistance forces are standing in the middle of the scene."

The Palestinian resistance has neutralized all conspiracies, he said, adding that the Annapolis conference was a disgrace for certain governments and individuals.

Ahmadinejad reiterated that the Annapolis conference was a failure for its sponsors.

Tuesday, November 27, 2007

[...] Zimbabwe can no longer calculate the rate of inflation because there are not enough goods left in the shops to allow price comparisons, the Central Statistical Office claimed yesterday.

Moffat Nyoni, the Director of the CSO, said that it had been impossible to compile reliable data for the past month because of “the unavailability of required information such as prices of goods, due to their shortage on the formal market”.

According to leaked figures, the annual inflation rate in October stood at 14,840 per cent — almost double the 8,000 per cent in the previous month. The CSO usually publishes its statistics in the middle of the month, and its failure to do so this month led to allegations that they had been deliberately suppressed. Each passing month’s figures openly contradict the Government’s constantly trumpeted claim that it is beating inflation.

But Moffat Nyoni, the director of the CSO, said inflation in Zimbabwe could no longer be measured, because there were not enough goods in the shops. [...]

[...] Massive demonstrations in the occupied territories protesting the participation of the Palestinian delegation have shown that the Palestinian Authority has no legitimacy, with many people believing that the motive behind the U.S.-hosted conference is to support the Zionist regime.

The other goal of the autumn conference is to bring Arab states closer to Israel, especially after the stillbirth of Washington’s new Middle East initiative.

In addition, since Israel is not prepared to enter into dialogue with the Palestinian delegation on key issues, like the establishment of an independent Palestinian state, the return of refugees, and the final status of Beit-ul-Moqaddas (Jerusalem), the Palestinian side will be the main loser.

Certain Arab states that agreed to participate in the conference are making a hesitant approach to the U.S.-envisioned alliance so that they can have a share in the future division of power in the region.

In light of such regional variables, the question of whether the Arab states are trying to distance themselves from regional crises and the Palestinian issue arises.

If those Arab states which participated in the Annapolis Conference are really trying to resolve the Palestinian issue, why don’t they ask the United States and Israel for a work plan?

Of course, if there is no logical response to the legitimate demands of jihadi groups and no just resolution of the Palestinian conflict, the Arab peoples will never allow their rulers to establish political relations with the Zionist regime, and this conference will create political problems for them at home. [...]

Soccer Dad has alerted me to the following essay from the NY Post. It says eloquently what most conservatives have been saying in general about the folly of the Annapolis-summit (with numerous Mark Steyn-style one-liners as an added bonus):

[...] In the Middle East, you can't buy peace. You can only buy time. If we want to help at all, the fundamental requirement is to have realistic expectations.

At present, the situation is aggravated by the Bush administration's desperate quest for a headline-worthy foreign-policy success - mirroring the Clinton administration in its closing years. But desperation's a poor basis for dealing with a geopolitical problem of near-infinite complexity, with ill will on every side except our own.

What happens in the course of Middle East "peace" talks under such circumstances? Whether the American administration is Republican or Democrat, it pressures Israel for concessions - since the Arabs won't make any. Prisoner releases precede each summit; territorial handovers come under discussion.

For their parts, Arab leaders and their representatives assume we're sufficiently honored if they just show up. We hear no end of nonsense about the great political risks they're taking, etc. We're suckers for any fat guy in a white robe with an oil can.

Today's session in Annapolis may or may not result in a we-the-undersigned statement or a few unenforceable commitments. [There is now a joint-statement-YG.] And yes, there's merit just in bringing folks together and keeping them talking. But the baseline difficulty is that we want to solve problems for people who don't really want those problems solved.

Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah Party, for example, couldn't accept a genuine peace tomorrow morning - even though Hamas' coup in Gaza has put them up against the wall. Their problem? The most successful jobs program in the Arab world has been Palestinian "resistance" to Israel.[...]

The one place I would quibble is the assumption that Bush is repeating Clinton's failed legacy-quest. True, the determination to plow in such barren pastures begs for some sort of explanation, but I don't think Bush is desperate for a legacy. If he is, the joke is on him, isn't it? I think rather that Bush continues to follow his foreign-policy assumptions. He is convinced, as he has often said, that everyone, without exception, yearns for freedom and a better life. By all rights, the United States should be able to lead a movement for peace, freedom, and sanity. This would require, however, a unity of the left and right worldwide that is no more likely to come about than the Palestinians are to act in their own self-interest.

Sunday, November 25, 2007

Hamas can make the rockets it fires at Israel much deadlier by packing them with more explosives, a senior Hamas official said in a statement Saturday.

"They can be developed in a short period to create sufficient terror and fear and make the Israelis live in pain no less than what our people live through because of the repeated incursions into our villages and cities in the West Bank and Gaza," wrote Yousef, a senior Hamas leader said.

Yousef also said Israel has rejected repeated truce offers by Hamas, as Hamas is ready to make calm in the region and the ball is in the Zionist playground.

Sami Abu Zuhri, Hamas leader, called the announcement "a great shock for Palestinians because it opened the door for direct normalization with the occupation amid its continued escalation and aggression."

"The Palestinian people had awaited an Arab consensus for breaking the siege," Abu Zuhri said in a statement, referring to a Western aid embargo and Israeli military crackdowns on Gaza since Hamas swept to power in 2006 elections.

"This meeting will only achieve more failure and more harm to the Palestinian cause and to Arab and Palestinian rights."

"Resistance in all its forms and means will escalate in the West Bank and Gaza against the Zionist enemy," Marzouk said in a written interview. "This is because Annapolis will expose the arbitrariness of the [political] settlement track and its destructive endeavors." Hamas official Moussa Abu Marzouk said.

Denouncing the Annapolis Summit is a big current theme in the Iranian press. From IRIB:

No injury deeper than the Palestinian tragedy has ever hurt the body of the world of Islam, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told a gathering of the members of the Basij Organization on Sunday.

"The Zionist regime has been committing crimes and murders in Palestine over the past sixty years," Ahmadinejad added, adding that the global arrogance had been trying in the past sixty years to deprive the oppressed Palestinian nation from its rights.

"They have designed a new plot now to further abuse the issue," Ahmadinejad said in reference to the Annapolis confab in the United States.

Ahmadinejad underlined a growing inclination on the part of the Palestinian people towards the option of resistance, adding that the coming to power of revolutionary and uncompromising figures in the latest Palestinian elections was proof to that argument.

"Following the elections (when Hamas was voted into office), Zionist regime's supporters have carried out many seditions," the President said, warning that the advocates of the regime want to wring concessions in favor of the criminal Zionists through the Annapolis confab.

The President reprimanded the invitees to the so-called 'peace' confab for their positive response, calling it repetition of failure.

"They have participarted in such confabs during the past sixty years, but they haven't achieved any result," Ahmadinejad said.

"These kinds of confabs are only in favor of the Zionist regime," the President said.

Ahmadinejad regretted that the Annapolis confab is set to be held in a country that is the base and supporter of the Zionists.

"The Palestinian nation is alive and awakened and will never ignore its rights," the President underlined.

Ahmadinejad noted that none of those who were to take part in the confab are representing the Palestinian nation.

"The existence of the Zionist regime is an insult to the dignity of the human being," he said, adding "those who take part in such confabs as the Annapolis meeting will leave no good records in history."

There's more where that came from:

IRNA: "Ahmadinejad: Annapolis conference not beneficial to Palestinians" [This one actually moves on rather quickly to the nuclear issue]:

He said enemies and opponents of the Iranian nation had made some wrong decisions based on false information and raised charges against the Iranian nation.

"The time has come for you to be courageous and accept your mistake. The Iranian nation is great and will forgive you," he said.

Saturday, November 24, 2007

Here's an article from the Telegraph about two "cosmologists" who claim that Human "activities may be shortening the life of the universe." What is the offending activity? Simply observing the cosmos, and the explanation seems to be some sort of Schrodinger's cat scenario. I often find it frustrating to read this sort of stuff. It isn't that I'm so alarmed about the universe, it is simply that by the time all the science has been reduced to metaphors by journalists, there doesn't seem to be anything left but gibberish. See if you can make anything out of this:

The startling claim is made by a pair of American cosmologists investigating the consequences for the cosmos of quantum theory, the most successful theory we have. Over the past few years, cosmologists have taken this powerful theory of what happens at the level of subatomic particles and tried to extend it to understand the universe, since it began in the subatomic realm during the Big Bang.

The Boomerang Nebula, mankind 'shortening the universe's life'Cosmologists claim by observing dark energy the universe has been nudged closer to its death

But there is an odd feature of the theory that philosophers and scientists still argue about. In a nutshell, the theory suggests that we change things simply by looking at them and theorists have puzzled over the implications for years.

They often illustrate their concerns about what the theory means with mind-boggling experiments, notably Schrodinger's cat in which, thanks to a fancy experimental set up, the moggy is both alive and dead until someone decides to look, when it either carries on living, or dies. That is, by one interpretation (by another, the universe splits into two, one with a live cat and one with a dead one.)

New Scientist reports a worrying new variant as the cosmologists claim that astronomers may have accidentally nudged the universe closer to its death by observing dark energy, a mysterious anti gravity force which is thought to be speeding up the expansion of the cosmos.

The damaging allegations are made by Profs Lawrence Krauss of Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, and James Dent of Vanderbilt University, Nashville, who suggest that by making this observation in 1998 we may have caused the cosmos to revert to an earlier state when it was more likely to end. "Incredible as it seems, our detection of the dark energy may have reduced the life-expectancy of the universe," Prof Krauss tells New Scientist.

The team came to this depressing conclusion by calculating how the energy state of our universe - a kind of summation of all its particles and all their energies - has evolved since the big bang of creation 13.7 billion years ago.

Some mathematical theories suggest that, in the very beginning, there was a void that possessed energy but was devoid of substance. Then the void changed, converting energy into the hot matter of the big bang. But the team suggests that the void did not convert as much energy to matter as it could, retaining some, in the form of what we now call dark energy, which now accelerates the expansion of the cosmos.

Like the decay of a radioactive atom, such shifts in energy state happen at random and it is possible that this could trigger a new big bang. The good news is that theory suggests that the universe should remain in its current state.

Following all this? Here's more:

But the bad is that quantum theory says that whenever we observe or measure something, we could stop it decaying due what is what is called the "quantum Zeno effect," which suggests that if an "observer" makes repeated, quick observations of a microscopic object undergoing change, the object can stop changing - just as a watched kettle never boils.

"A watched kettle never boils"? I thought that was just a cute folk-saying. And who is trying to determine the state of the universe anyway? Isn't it the cosmologists? Aren't they the problem?

In this case however, it turns out that quantum mechanics implies that if an unstable system has survived for far longer than the average such system should, then the probability that it will continue to survive decreases more slowly than it otherwise would. By resetting the clock, the survival probability would now once again fall exponentially.

Getting the idea that you're not really supposed to be paying attention? If "the probability that it will continue to survive decreases more slowly than it otherwise would," isn't that good? Oh, but then there's that "resetting the clock" business. Why does it work that way?

"The intriguing question is this," Prof Krauss told the Telegraph. "If we attempt to apply quantum mechanics to the universe as a whole, and if our present state is unstable, then what sets the clock that governs decay? Once we determine our current state by observations, have we reset the clock? If so, as incredible as it may seem, our detection of dark energy may have reduced the life expectancy of our universe." [...]

More bad news:

This is not the only damage to the heavens that astronomers may have caused. Our cosmos is now significantly lighter than scientists had thought after an analysis of the amount of light given out by galaxies concluded that some shone from lightweight electrons, not heavyweight atoms. In all, the new analysis suggests that the universe has lost about one fifth of its overall mass. [...]

Could that be adapted into a method to shed some extra pounds? The article never addresses this vital question. That's the trouble with cosmologists: they don't think big.

Further thoughts: Perhaps we should tell these cosmologist guys that tinokos shel beis rabban are keeping the world in existence so no need to worry?

Friday, November 23, 2007

You've heard of "If it ain't broke, don't fix it"? Think of this as "If it ain't broke, you can still destroy it":

The Sixth International Conference on Latin American Studies opened Wednesday in Havana with the words of Cuban economist Osvaldo Martinez who said, "The capitalist system will not collapse due to economic crisis; it must be toppled with political activism."

Martinez, a Cuban legislator and head of the World Economy Research Center, said that the current global crisis experienced by capitalism "comes at an especially promising time" in Latin America as it's the only place in the world where there are anti-capitalist ruptures and new forms of integration such as the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA).

The conference is sponsored by the Center for Latin American Studies (CEA) and is designed to motivate reflection from a perspective of critical thinking. The gathering includes lectures on the world economy, the crisis of neoliberal capitalism and on the specific case of the United States. Other topics include forms of resistance, new leaderships, and Latina American and Caribbean integration.

[...] The Hebrew Bible sets forth the law of Shmita, which states that the land must rest in the seventh year, the Sabbath, and that in the seventh year the debts of Jews must be forgiven. Recall that God rested on the seventh day.

For Jewry, this means that before the seventh year of the Jewish calender, Gentiles must be exterminated and the Earth must be made desolate by war and climate change. Jews believe that the Jewish People will then endure a thousand year resting period, which at the end will seem to have been a single day (Psalm 90:4). During this thousand years, the Earth and nature will restore themselves and the Jews will purify their divine blood, thereby restoring order to the World and creating a "New Earth" populated only with righteous Jews . . .

Righteous Jews--that's not so bad, right?

Worldwide famine can today be artificially created by economic means and by deliberately destroying food, as World Jewry did when they deliberately genocided the Ukrainians. Jews are at this time manufacturing genetically targeted biological weapons meant to kill off the Goyim while preserving the Jews. The Jewish bankers have exploited the Third World and destroyed the forests and natural processes of the Earth resulting in climate change. Genetic analysis now affords Jewry a means to arbitrarily define that which is Jewish in the human family and surrogate mothers could easily provide the Jews with a means to multiply their ranks exponentially in the near future.

If you doubt these things, I suggest you ask yourselves why Jewry has wasted so many resources to steal Palestine and continually agitates for World War III? Why is Jewry continually degrading cultures, mass murdering intellectuals, destroying nations, destroying the environment, and destroying non-Jewish religions? What does this nihilistic destruction accomplish, if not the artificial fulfillment of Jewish messianic prophecy?

If Jewry succeed in their plans, it will not be a human race which awakens after the thousand year rest.

Only a tiny minority are planning this. They hijacked the religion. We now have the problem relatively under control.

The first leg of his inspection was the 1st company of the third battalion of the unit.

He dropped in at its service commanding room to acquaint himself with the company's performance of combat duty.

He expressed satisfaction over the fact that the servicepersons of the company have performed their guard duty with a high degree of revolutionary vigilance and in a responsible manner and the company has intensified the working class education, equipping all of them with the transparent working class consciousness.

I wonder how he could tell?

He took warm care of the living of the servicepersons, looking round an education room, a bedroom, a mess hall, a wash-cum-bath house, a non-staple food store, a barn and other places of the company.

He highly praised the commanding officers and soldiers of the company for keeping their barracks neat and tidy and assiduously managing their economic life in perfect unity.

When you've got the transparent working class consciousness, it's easy!

He said that the commanding officers have a very important role to play in establishing revolutionary discipline in the army.

He met Jon Hye Yong, company commander who graduated from the Kang Pan Sok Revolutionary School, praised her for devotedly serving at the post for defending the homeland with ardent patriotism, like her father who laid down his life for the Party and the revolution, and told her to become a fine woman revolutionary.

You become a fine woman revolutionary now, y'hear?

He had a photo session with the servicepersons of the company. The next leg of his inspection was the 1st company of the 2nd battalion of the unit.

After acquainting himself with the company's performance of duty, he learned about how the training is conducted there.

Praising the company for having obtained the top mark in the review of the drill by paying primary attention to the training, he stressed that it is a sure guarantee for increasing the combat capability to undergo an effective training.

After being informed of the supply service by the commanding officers of the company, he went round entertainment and cultural and supply service facilities to get familiar with the soldiers' living.

It is good for the soldiers of the company to conduct brisk diverse cultural activities by use of frontline musical instruments and other instruments, he noted, urging the company to become a model in art activities, too.

Using frontline art supplies?

He appreciated the successes made by the servicepersons of the company, expressing satisfaction over the fact that they are leading a revolutionary and militant life after successfully sprucing up their revolutionary post.

Noting that all of the servicepersons of the KPA are heroes whose life is shining like stars as they remain loyal to the Party, he added that the Korean revolution is making a steady advance as the era is steered by this group of revolutionaries.

He had a photo session with the servicepersons of the company.

There was no photo with the article, though. Drat!

Update: A recent and beautifully-written article about North Korea by Peter Hitchens contains the following description of a North Korean soldier:

I am prepared to believe that North Korea has a nuclear weapon, though I think the evidence is inconclusive and the country certainly does not possess an accurate, reliable rocket with which to deliver such a warhead. But its military power in general is decrepit. I saw many soldiers, though we were forbidden to photograph them. I suspect this is because they are undersized, shabbily dressed, and their weapons are ancient and probably useless. One infantryman, who halted us at a checkpoint on the way to the frontier, carried a rifle whose unvarnished wooden stock was split. The metal parts were worn and old. I should not have wanted to fire such a gun, for fear that it would blow up in my face, and I doubt if it had been used for many years.

Wednesday, November 21, 2007

[...] The biggest fuss this time seems to be the amendment that would abolish term limits for the presidency.

Perhaps it is because I am from Chicago, and had only one mayor from the time I was born until I graduated college, that I am unable to see this as the making of a dictatorship.

Not to mention that if Hillary Clinton is elected next year, we will have Bushes and Clintons as heads of state for a full consecutive 24 years, and possibly 28 . . .

Some [proposed constitutional amendments] have drawn opposition even among Chavez's supporters. If they are approved, it will likely be because the majority of voters trust Chavez and the government not to abuse their powers.

And there is some basis for this trust: the National Assembly earlier this year gave Chavez the power, for 18 months, to enact certain legislation by executive order. The pundits screamed about Chavez "ruling by decree," but in fact this power has not been used much at all, except in dealings with foreign corporations.

In any case, the voters will decide, with a far stronger opposition media than exists in the United States proselytising against the government. Venezuelans have not lost civil liberties the way people in the U.S. (or even the UK) have in recent years, and ordinary citizens continue to have more say in their government, and share more in its oil wealth, than ever before.[...]

Apologetics for Mugabe are at the more-advanced blame-somebody-else stage:

THE recent announcement by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown that he will not be attending the Portugal Summit because Robert Mugabe has been invited to it is, to say the least, laughable . . .

The British have turned Mugabe into such an ogre that they themselves have become hostage to their own propaganda. Truth be told, Mugabe's critics do not have a moral right to criticise his policies because Zimbabwe's economic and political woes, partly blamed due to Mugabe's land reforms, have a lot to do with its former colonial power, Britain.

Let's not forget that the British government failed to honour an agreement that was entered way back in 1979, where it pledged to rectify post-independence imbalances in land ownership between blacks and whites. The meeting in London hosted by former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher agreed to help Zimbabwe carry out a land redistribution exercise, but later when the Labour Party came to power, they withdrew from the programme.

Of course many other nations in Africa that were colonised by Britain up to date have huge swathes of land still being occupied by the colonisers, and here, I have to point out that Africans appreciate the work they are doing to promote agriculture and the general economies of the respective countries. But Mugabe sought to use his own way and reclaim the parcels of land. Whether his move was wise is debatable, since he's just a victim of broken promises from Britain. [...]

Anything less than submerging the Jewish population of Israel in a Muslim majority must be resisted in the name of, get this, "the Universal Declaration of Human Rights." From Palestinian Chronicles:

[...] Any attempt to understand the rationale behind what is essentially a case of blatant violation of fundamental human rights, what Jimmy Carter, Desmund Tutu, John Dugard and many others call apartheid, is faced with accusations of anti-Semitism, a weapon used to silence voices calling for justice in the Middle East. The possibility of having peace with justice is far from realization what with the hermetic medieval siege imposed on 1.3 million already impoverished population of Gaza, and the slicing of the already sliced West Bank. The impossibility of the realization of the national dream of one third of the Palestinian People has brought forward the embarrassing question of the rights of the remaining two thirds, namely the dispossessed refuges living in miserable camps in other countries, some of which treat them like animals, and the third-class citizens of Israel.

What is the Palestinian cause if not the right of return of the refugees, those inside and outside Palestine? Is there a slight possibility of having ‘peace’ in the Middle East without resolving this question? If, as the Geneva Initiative signatories claim, there is a way of finding a 'just solution' that does not include their return, does that guarantee a just comprehensive peace? Is that not a violation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights? But ideology has its own way, especially when it is powerful, one that represents the interests of racial supremacists. The Whites of apartheid South Africa defined the institutions of the country as democratic—albeit white democracy, i.e. by and for whites only. Native Africans never recognized the 'white nature' of that country. The idea of defining the country as exclusively white and democratic at the same time was never accepted by the international community. It was considered blatant racism. Unlike Palestinians, Black Africans are considered human beings, and therefore, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights applies to them.

That is precisely what the call for the recognition of Israel as a Jewish state means. Forget about 5 million refugees scattered all over the world as a result of the process of ethnic cleansing that accompanied the establishment of Israel; and don’t even mention the cultural and national rights of 1.3 million Palestinian "citizens" of Israel itself. According to this formulation, the Palestinians are only those who live in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. The Middle East conflict, in case you don’t know, will be resolved if the latter are given a flag and 3 to 4 truncated Bantustans, with a chief that we can call a president. The Annapolis meeting is NOT going to deal with the refugees’ issue, NOR will it call for an end to blatant racism exercised against "Israeli Arabs;" NOR will it call for the eradication of the apartheid wall being constructed in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. So why is the Annapolis meeting being held? In order to practically change the meaning of Article I of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by making the victim her/himself accept the status of lesser than an animal. That is the ultimate goal that Vervoordt and Bhota, and other architects of Apartheid, failed to do in 42 years. Are Bush, Olmert and Blair going to succeed?

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Wednesday that resisting bullying powers and ill-wishers of the Iranian nation is much important than having nuclear energy.

Addressing a large group of enthusiastic people in Ardebil, the president said "If we yield to the pressures being exerted by our enemies there will be no chance to maintain our independent." "Our access to nuclear energy will increase the pace of our development," he said.

"Our resistance to bullying powers will bring us more dignity than benefiting from nuclear energy," he said.

"Our access to nuclear energy will prepare the ground for significant development in industrial and economic sectors," said the president.

"When the US fail to pressurize us, there will be no excuse for other powers to do the same," he pointed out.

"Your brave resistance sealed the doom of our enemies and now the country has turned into a powerful country," said the president.

Ahmadinejad said that Iran is not an aggressor but advocates friendship and brotherhood who in turn brings blessing, peace and security for all nations.

He called on people to remain on the scene and help bring more dignity to the country.

Aw, can't we bring more dignity to the nation off the scene, Mr. President?

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

The article ends by describing some of the arrests and sentences which have reduced violent incidents in Britain, but in the meantime, the, um, successes of some of these terror campaigns have been shocking. From Der Spiegel:

[...] A fortress is precisely what Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS), one of Europe's largest animal research companies and the mortal enemy of the defenders of animal souls, is. On its heavily guarded grounds near Cambridge, HLS tests pharmaceutical substances on animals. But the company also prepares toxicological reports for household chemicals, environmental pesticides and food additives. It consumes tens of thousands of mice and rats each year, as well as smaller numbers of birds, rabbits, dogs and a few monkeys. But the regular attacks by animal rights activists have brought Huntingdon to the brink of ruin.

Repeated bomb scares and the resulting evacuations are the least of HLS's problems. Employees have been secretly photographed and their photos published on the Internet. Some have found explosives under their cars. CEO Brian Cass, now 60, was assaulted and beaten in front of his house by three attackers using tear gas and clubs.

The members of a group called SHAC (Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty) threaten anyone who cooperates with HLS, from cleaning services to couriers to banks, with similar treatment. The group's intimidation tactics have been tremendously successful, turning HLS into a pariah in the business world. "It's as if we were radioactive," says Cass. Other businesses no longer dare to be openly associated with the company. HLS has no bank account, no insurance policy, no auditors and no investors willing to identify themselves as such. The British government has jumped in to provide the company, with annual sales of €93 million, with the most basic services. HLS has had to build its own laundry facilities, its own cafeteria and its own security service.

"Your life is in danger whenever you go to your car after working in the torture chamber." These were the words that activist Julia Didrikson, 43, wrote in one of her mass e-mails to HLS employees. In another missive, she threatened: "Don't even think that your children are safe, if you have any. It doesn't take us long to find out where they go to school and where they live." In late September, Didrikson was sentenced to five months in prison for making the threats. When she was taken into custody she insisted: "But I'm just a harmless animal lover."

Donald Currie, a 41-year-old, unemployed psychiatric nurse turned bomb builder, was sentenced to 12 years in prison. It was only by accident that he didn't kill anyone. Mark Taylor, 39, began a four-year prison sentence in March. As a member of SHAC, Taylor was responsible for occupying the offices of companies linked to HLS. In a typical campaign, he and a dozen other activists, all wearing skull masks, would burst into an office and shout "murderers" at the employees. Some of the companies he and his fellow activists raided were so intimidated that they promptly cut off all ties to Huntingdon.[...]

When Ann Collard and her husband hired a private contractor in August to trim the trees around their home, they could not have imagined the bill would balloon to nearly $350,000.

Costs soared when a city urban forester cited the Collards for illegally pruning 13 trees — including five that are reportedly on city-owned land — without a permit. And under the city’s new Indigenous Tree Ordinance, the fine was equal to twice the value of the damaged trees.

The fine has the attention of the City Council, which is awaiting a report on the matter before deciding how to address the potential unintended consequences of an ordinance that was adopted in March mainly to discourage property owners from razing protected trees to clear the way for development.

The Collards decided to prune the trees after receiving a June fire danger abatement order from the Glendale Fire Department, reminding homeowners of the necessary 5-foot vertical clearance between structures and vegetation, Ann Collard said.

A private tree-trimming contractor based in Orange County hired to prune the canopy back said no permits were needed, she said, but an urban forester ordered the pruning stopped on the third day.

Ann Collard said she was aware of a tree ordinance, but she did not know it prohibited any sort of pruning, especially with a fire danger abatement order in hand. [...]

Monday, November 19, 2007

Between the two of them, Ahmadinejad is the sane one. Warning: reading this can lead to tooth damage:

Rabbi Moishe Arye Friedman of Austria has said Iran is the best model for human rights for children.

Rabbi Friedman, who is the chief rabbi of the Orthodox Anti-Zionist Society of Austria, his wife Lea, and six of their seven children returned to their home in Vienna, Austria on Thursday after almost two months in Iran.

Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad warmly welcomed them after the Friday Prayers of Quds Day (October 5) and said he would join them in prayers and celebrations in Beit-ul-Moqaddas (Jerusalem) when it is liberated from Zionism and the Zionist regime.

In addition, the Friedmans met some of Iran’s religious leaders.

The family also took part in many religious ceremonies and events at Iran’s Jewish synagogues and schools.

They have said that there is no place in the world where Jews have so much freedom to practice their religion, adding that Iran’s Jews also enjoy all the other advantages of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

The also visited the tombs of Mordechai and Esther in Hamedan.

Before coming to Iran, Rabbi Friedman’s children were attacked by Zionist elements in Austria and Britain in retaliation for the fact that the rabbi had attended the Tehran Holocaust Conference in December 2006.

His children required hospitalization after the attacks. They were also expelled from school in Vienna, kidnapped in London, and illegally imprisoned and tortured in Vienna.

The Friedmans say all this was the work of Mossad agents of the Israeli embassies in Vienna and London.

The family expressed gratitude to the Austrian Supreme Court for their efforts to ensure their children could return to school and to prosecute the culprits, but added that the justice minister and other Austrian politicians beholden to Israel and the Zionist World Jewish Congress are hindering implementation of the court orders. [...]

Songun zombie-prose is always in high repetitive and militant spirit and displays invincible rigidity as strong repetitive prose which takes full charge not only of the country's propaganda but of socialist paragraph construction:

The unity based on comradeship serves as the most powerful weapon for Songun revolution . . .

The Korean revolution has emerged victorious thanks to the might of the unity based on comradeship.

President Kim Il Sung started the revolution in his early years by winning comrades and paved a victorious way in the whole historical course of the Korean revolution with the noble sense of revolutionary comradeship.

No one so values and shows deep loving care for revolutionary comrades as Kim Jong Il does. The single-minded unity of the people in the DPRK around the headquarters of revolution is the one in which all of them are united as one being attracted by his comradeship and the most durable and mighty one produced by his ardent comradeship.

The Korean revolution is making steady progress to a new higher stage under the Songun leadership of the Workers' Party of Korea. The unity based on the comradeship is a real picture of Songun Korea and a source of its inexhaustible strength. It also provides a sure guarantee for all its victories.

This unity serves as the most powerful fortress of devotedly defending the headquarters of revolution.

Today the army and people in the DPRK have become ardent comrades of Songun revolution to resolutely defend the headquarters of revolution. "Let us share intention with Kim Jong Il to the last." This is the unanimous desire and will of the army and people of the DPRK.

The unity based on the revolutionary comradeship also serves as a basic source of invincible might of the Korean People's Army.

The whole army is united based on the comradeship and has achieved successful unity with the people based on it. As a result, the KPA is always in high revolutionary and militant spirit and displays invincible might as strong revolutionary army which takes full charge not only of the country's defence but of socialist construction.

The unity has become a motive force giving an impetus to performing fresh miracles and feats in building a great prosperous powerful nation.

The single-minded unity based on comradeship serves as a lifeline and eternal foundation of Songun revolution as it gives a steady continuity to the nation's history of victory and prosperity, the article concludes.

Sunday, November 18, 2007

Palestinian Interior Minister Abdur Razzaq Mahmoud Al-Yahya pledged on Sunday to disband all Palestinian military factions, including the Al-Aqsa Brigades, affiliated with his own ruling Fatah party.

Al-Yahya said that the last seven years of armed Intifada, or uprising, have been "disastrous" for the Palestinian situation.

Al-Yahya, himself a former commander of the Palestine Liberation Army, tolf the Kuwaiti Ar-Rai newspaper: "The security plan in the Palestinian territories is progressing in parallel steps in armament, training and restructuring the security headquarters and prisons. At the same time, Hamas' and other groups' weapons are being collected."

The Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority is currently implementing a US-supported multimillion dollar security plan in the West Bank city of Nablus, that while reducing crime, has been seen by some as a political move to consolidate Fatah's authority in thw West Bank.

Al-Yahya dropped the suggestion that Hamas is plotting to take control of the West Bank as they did in the Gaza Strip in June: "The Palestinian security in the West Bank revealed cells affiliated to Hamas' Executive Force smuggling weapons and plotting to repeat the Gaza Strip coup in the West Bank."

Palestinian factions strongly denounced on Sunday the statements of the Palestinian Minister of Interior, Abdelrazeq Alyehia (West Bank), who declared commitment to disarm the Palestinian military wings.

Islamic Jihad leader, Nafez Azzam, said that if such statements were true, it would be a disaster for the Palestinian people and their sacrifices.

Azzam added, in a statement, that any decision could not end the resistance of our people, and it is impossible to end resistance and to collect resistance weapons.

Alyehia revealed Sunday that the Palestinian Authority promised Israel to disarm all Palestinian military wings.

He asserted that resistance has a clear understanding; meanwhile what happened last seven years was a disaster on the Palestinian people.

Hamas Spokesperson, Hammad Alriqib, said that Hamas will defend all Palestinian resisters. [...]

It is easy to believe that Fatah wants to consolidate its power and pursue its rivalry with Hamas. The idea that they are turning away from policies which have been "disastrous" and that they can take the rest of the Palestinians with them seems too good to be true. Hamas seems to emerge here as the patron and ally of all the "armed factions." This should prove interesting.

Saturday, November 17, 2007

In a dangerous precedent, some traitors planted two Plastic bombs "Anti persons" in Al Qassam Brigades' site in Rafah city. This kind of bombs are just available in the hands of the Zionist occupation forces. Those traitors exploited the evacuation of Al Qassam Brigades' site because of the Zionist threaten in targeting the site.

The two bombs exploded in Al Qassam members during their checking to the site, which led to amputate the right leg to the two members. The first investigations indicate that someone had planted these explosive in the place. We are carrying the responsibility to the occupation and its traitors, who are coordinating with the occupation.

We are assuring on the following:

1. These crimes will not make us afraid but we will insists on continuing our jihad and our resistance.

2. Al Qassam Brigades will continue its investigations and the criminals will be brought to justice.

3. Those who are accused in these crimes are from Fatah solstitial members. Those criminals are getting help from the Zionist occupation in order to achieve illusory goals.

4. We call the Interior Ministry to investigate in this crime and prosecuting the evildoers as traitors.

Those Fatah Zionists are at it again! What else is blog-worthy . . . Here we go, they never disappoint: "Mother of Martyrs and mother of cowards": [Don't you like that title? No capital letters for the mother of cowards!]

When speaking about the sacrifice of the Palestinian people, we cannot but remember every Palestinian woman: the mother, wife, daughter , and sister. All of them have their large share in the suffering and sacrifice. However, the Zionist women are not even ready to send their sons to the struggle with Hamas in the Gaza Strip as the tactics of battles differ from what were happening before.

Um Nidal bid her son Mohammad farewell before his famous operation, and waited for his return as a martyr. She did not expect him to return alive. But she waited to hear news of victory and martyrdom. He infiltrated into a military academy and killed more than ten soldiers before his martyrdom. Um-Nidal’s tears upon hearing the news were of happiness not sadness. However, a Zionist woman said "It won’t happen." You won’t be getting my sons for your Gaza war. " when hearing that her son will go to the Gaza attack by the occupation forces.

The Palestinian woman teach her sons to be the best in resisting the occupation as a legitimate right under the Zionist daily crimes and attacks against the civilians. The occupation forces make an army from every single child and woman in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank after the many historical massacres against the innocents.

"If you haven’t prepared possible alternatives for the war in the streets of Gaza, I guess you don’t care about my sons or about the commission of inquiry that will be established after the war that you know you’ll be able to overcome without personal conclusions." A Zionist woman said to the Occupation army.

" We are ready to send all of our sons in the Sake of Allah and to be martyrs…Why all of them not my son ,,, I want my son to be the first martyr…" A Palestinian woman said to the Qassam leaders.

THE crimes against Palestinians in the occupied territories and elsewhere, particularly since the Palestinians voted "the wrong way" in the Hamas victory last year, are so shocking that the only emotionally valid reaction is rage and a call for extreme actions. But that does not help the victims, and is likely to harm them.

Our actions have to be adapted to real-world circumstances, difficult as it may be to stay calm in the face of shameful crimes, in which we in the United States are directly and crucially implicated.

We are approaching President Bush's Annapolis conference on Israel-Palestine, the administration's first potentially serious diplomatic initiative in that conflict.

Ideally, the Annapolis negotiations should begin at the point that had been reached in Taba, Egypt, in January 2001. That week was the one moment in 30 years when the United States and Israel abandoned the rejectionist stance that they have maintained in virtual isolation until the present. And Taba came heartbreakingly close to a possible two-state settlement, with a reasonable land-swap. The conventional fabrication is that at Taba the Palestinians rejected Israel's generous offer. In fact, the conference was terminated abruptly by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, at a moment when negotiators reported that they were close to agreement. [...]

It's interesting that he refers to a "reasonable land-swap." The usual apologetics hold that the Palestinians were only offered "Bantustans" and, of course, declined. The left can't keep its non-fabrications straight.

Thursday, November 15, 2007

Lieutenant commander of the Iranian army's ground force said here on Thursday that his country has the most powerful army in the world.

"Our army is an idealistic organization established to safeguard the high goals, ideals and causes of the (Islamic ruling) system, "General Seyed Naser Hosseini said, adding, "Today, Iran's army is more powerful than all the other armies of the world."

Meantime, the General reminded that nature of the power of the Iranian army is different from those of other armies, saying, "Our capability differs from the nature of the capabilities of the world powers and it can't be assessed on the basis of such indices as weaponries, equipment and military possibilities."

"Rather, our beliefs and values along with our strong national motifs are considered as our power engine and strong point," he added.

A campaign is an extension of the candidate, reflecting his or her personality. Bill Clinton's in 1992 was a brilliant combination of soap opera and floating crap game. George W. Bush's cold-blooded machine had no compunction about waterboarding Sen. John McCain in 2000 or swift-boating Sen. John Kerry four years later. Hillary's campaign too is personality writ large: defensive, and seeking dominion over everything that moves.

Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Iranian justice system on Tuesday summoned to court five Argentine nationals for orchestrating scenario to implicate Iran in the 1994 terrorist bombing of Argentine-Israel Mutual Association (AMIA).

The terrorist bombing of the Jewish center occurred on July 18, 1994. Suspects had been reported to have local connections among whom many members of the Buenos Aires Provincial Police.

Argentine former minister of the interior Carlos Corach, AMIA president Ruben Beraja, Argentine judge Juan Jose Galeano, prosecutor Eamon Mullen and Jose Barbaccia have been notified by Argentine justice system to attend the court of justice in Tehran to hear the charges against them.

Deputy Prosecutor General, Yadollah Alizadeh said that the five Argentine nationals are charged with making case against Iran and hiring individuals with anti-government affiliations to give testimony against Iran.

Alizadeh said that the five Argentine nationals should report to Tehran Justice Department.

Otherwise, he said Iran will demand international arrest warrant against them by the International Police (Interpol).

Head of Assembly of Experts and Chairman of the Expediency Council Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani said here Wednesday that a hellish power in the region is determined to loot Iran's rich natural resources by weakening the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Rafsanjani made the remarks in a meeting with a group of people from provincial cities of Saveh and Zarandieh in Markazi province.

Those who created and brought up terrorist groups to confront the Islamic Revolution, rushed to suppress their own puppets and now they admit that terrorism have engulfed the entire region, he said.

Given the goals behind the US masterminded greater Middle East plan, he said the plot was to bolster Zionist regime and weaken Iran but this was to no avail, Rafsanjani said.

Devoted Iranian nation are the bastion in the campaign against enemies and it is the duty of the officials to be at their services by all means, Rafsanjani said.

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

The source is Khaleej Times, but it is interesting that Palestinian Chronicles picked it up. This thing is way down in the anti-Semitic gutter:

The other day I was watching this movie, The Sum of All Fears. The movie is based on a Tom Clancy novel by the same name. Clancy has long been a darling of Hollywood dream merchants. And if you’ve read any of his breathlessly racy thrillers, you would know why.

But there’s another reason why you should watch The Sum of All Fears: To see how the Israeli lobby and Zionists play big powers — in this case America and Russia — against each other, to achieve their own objectives.

This is a classic game the Zionists with their numerous lobby groups like AIPAC have been playing for decades, playing the Christian West and Islamic world against each other, seeking to destroy them both. Using this tactic, they managed to carve the Jewish state in the heart of Muslim world driving its original inhabitants, Palestinians, out. They are playing this game all over again and once again the action is set in the Middle East. They have already manipulated and used George W Bush’s America to destroy Iraq. And they are in the process of doing the same to Iran, using the reigning superpower with all its might and resources . . .

As [James] Petras argues: “They (Zionists) work hard to send thousands of American soldiers to their death in the Middle East in the interests of Greater Israel. They do not come with black shirts and stiff-arm salutes. The public face (of Zionist lobby) is a clean-shaved, neck-tied, pink-jowled attorney, real estate philanthropist or Ivy League professor. And they tell us to keep quiet or face slander, ostracism in our communities, loss of jobs or worst... (But) there is rising anger and hostility in America against the Zionists, against their arrogant authoritarian communal attacks on our democratic values. Sooner or later there will be a major backlash. The American people will not remember their cries of ‘anti-Semitism’; they will recall their role in sending thousands of American soldiers to their death in the Middle East in the interests of Israel.”

So the Americans and we Muslims have something in common. We are both victims of the Zionist conspiracies. We have known this for quite some time. When will this reality dawn on the Americans?

In retaliation for the Zionist regime's crimes against the defenceless Palestinians, including innocent women and children, Palestinian movements continued missile attacks on Zionist settled areas of the Occupied Palestine of 1948, IRIB reported from Gaza on Tuesday.

Jeish ul-Islam Unit affiliated to al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades claimed the responsibility for launching two middle-ranged Boraq missiles on the Zionist settled town of Erez. It announced that the operation was carried out in the framework of "Dawn of Resistance" operation and in retaliation for the Zionist regime's atrocities aganist the Palestinian nation.

Moreover, the armed branch of the Popular Front for Liberating Palestine Abu-Ali Mustafa Brigades in a statement claimed responsibility for launching a short-range missile on the Zionist settlement of Natif Etzra north of Gaza.

The statement added that the operation was carried out in regard to the Movement's resistance policy.

Meanwhile, Ezzoddin al-Ghassam Brigades, the armed branch of the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement Hamas, claimed responsibility for launching five mortar shells on the Zionist military base of Nahal Oz.

In the Western press would all these things be called "homemade rockets"?

Monday, November 12, 2007

An interesting bit of pro-Hizbullah cheerleading from the Iranian presss:

Hezbollah says the resistance movement is fully prepared to repel any Israeli invasion, and even change the future of the region.

"Following the July war the Israelis began to review their mistakes," the movement's Secretary-General Seyyed Hassan Nasrallah said on Sunday, referring to Israeli recent military moves near the Lebanese border.

Nasrallah added that the Israelis conducted the maneuvers with 50,000 forces in preparation for an invasion against Lebanon. “They (Israelis) have said the war games are aimed at improving their military coordination to stage another war on Lebanon," he said.

Nasrallah whose movement staged military maneuvers in response to the Israeli war games added that the real massage of the resistance group was to say that Hezbollah has the required knowledge and military capabilities to defend Lebanon.

"We are ready day and night to defend Lebanon and even to gain the largest ever victory that can change the future of the region. This is the real message of our military maneuvers," the Hezbollah leader added.

He also slammed the Lebanese government for its inaction against the Israeli hostile moves.

The Israeli army has deployed 50,000 troops near the country's borders but the Lebanese government has not even condemned the action, Nasrallah said.

"They don't consider Israel as the nation's foe and even some of them are pleased with it because Israel wants to eradicate Hezbollah," Nasrallah concluded.

Not that the feeling isn't mutual, you understand. MOT News has the AFP version of this story and speaking of Hizbullah, Jihad Watch has a post about "Hizballah Shish Kebabs." (How many spellings of "Hizbullah" can you spot in this post?)

Sunday, November 11, 2007

[...]Taking the FATA region as a whole, there are approximately 3 million inhabitants. The per capital income in Pakistan is about $800 per year (according to figures from 2005, perhaps slightly higher today, but not much). The Pakistani Armed Forces are about 1 million strong. Let us suppose that they earn 3 times the per capita income, and that the people in the FATA region are at the national average.

What if we changed the game completely? Instead of a single bounty on their heads, we offer the 3 million people of the region 3 years of income (i.e., $2400/person) or $7.2B, about 2-3 weeks of operations in Iraq. Large families of 20 people, therefore, would wind up with $48,000, a huge sum in Pakistan. Means for distributing the money would have to be established, and systems to prevent a flood on the market would need to be considered. Aggregating the sums further on a village level would provide the people opportunities to improve the material parts of their lives substantially.

In order to ensure the military was on the same page, we could offer $5000 per soldier, costing us another $5B, so the total cost of this program would be about a month's worth of Iraq spending.

What's the deal? They have to produce both Osama and Zawahiri. Since everyone in the FATA is benefiting, and thus everyone is involved, the risk of execution for producing them is reduced.[...]

Mahmoud Al-Zahar, as you know if you have been following the news and/or some of the more important Israel-advocacy blogs, is a Hamas official who stated that if Israel withdraws from the West Bank, then Hamas will take control just as it did in Gaza.

I think that we have once again been granted an unusually clear view of reality. It is an understatement that Israel lacks a "peace-partner." It has in Hamas a permanent enemy which, in a fairly likely worst-case scenario, could become the permanent leadership of the Palestinians. It could be that it already has in all but name. And non-democratic movements don't willingly give up power once they gain it.

At the very least, Hamas is likely to retain enough power to prevent Fatah from being able to function as a peace-partner even if it wishes to do so, which is far from established. For a true land-for-peace deal to go into effect, the Palestinians will need to produce leadership which can prevail among the Palestinians collectively and which will actually negotiate in good faith.

A slight majority can prevail in a Democracy because there is a tradition under which the party that loses an election goes along with the normal course of governance, even though its favored policies are not being enacted. The Palestinians, in contrast, are lead by a collection of Islamist and Marxist militias. Hamas and Islamic Jihad are backed by Iran and there is now an Al-Qaeda presence among the Palestinians. A true peace-partner would need to subdue or subsume all these groups for its will to prevail. The West and Israel look to Fatah as the candidate peace-partner, but it's getting weaker and it never showed much commitment to peace in the first place.

Saturday, November 10, 2007

Robert Spencer at Jihad Watch writes indignantly and probably with some justification that his blog is once again being unfairly represented by the unmoderated comments. The article in question is "The surprising truth about Rage Boy, America's hated poster-boy of Islamic radicalism" from the Daily Mail. Amusingly, the "surprising truth" is that Rage Boy (real name "Shakeel Ahmad Bhat") is not some fearful, hate-worthy, arch-terrorist. That's where the comments from Jihad Watch come in: exhibits for the article's theme that Rage Boy is the object of hate. Actually, contempt and ridicule is more like it. Rage Boy, I would say, is usually represented as a poster boy for the sort of easily-excited moron that gets himself killed rioting at some Danish Embassy in Yemen. It isn't so surprising that Rage Boy might become a figure of pathos if you actually got to know him (I am reminded of the passage in which Alice is introduced to the mutton), but he really does seem worthy of ridicule if you're the hard-hearted sort:

He sometimes watches Al Jazeera English on television and although he cannot comprehend much of what is said, he told me he can work out what is going on from the images on screen and from what his brothers have told him.

If something upsets him, he organises a demonstration.

He seems to be quite an idealist.

He has demonstrated against the Pope's comments about Islam, against the sexual exploitation of Kashmiri girls, against police violence and 'encounter' killings and against the honouring of Rushdie. Why did he object to Rushdie being knighted?

"He has a reputation for Muslim-bashing," he said solemnly. "Why is the London government encouraging someone who does these things?"

To my surprise, Shakeel seemed to have no time for Bin Laden, although he does not believe he was responsible for the 9/11 attacks . . .

Shocking!

"I heard that planes had crashed into the Twin Towers. I thought it was very bad that so many civilians had been killed. But afterwards I was told it was America's own government that had arranged the attack."

How could that have happened? "Money can make wonders."

But why would America have wanted to do such a thing?

"There is a strong lobby in the USA that opposes President Bush. He wanted to attack Afghanistan and Iraq. He had to justify that to his own people." [...]

Here's a passage on RB's romantic prospects:

When the Islamic Rage Boy phenomenon took off and Shakeel had his face reproduced all over the world, the local police got worried and brought him in for questioning.

"They had photocopies from the internet which they showed to me."

They told Shakeel to stop going on demonstrations but he refused.

He says he was brought before one of Srinagar's most senior police officers, who offered him an administrative job in the government, and said he would find him a girl to marry. I believe him – Indian authorities have a habit of trying to rehabilitate militants who are no longer an obvious threat.

"They said they would drop all the cases against me if I quit going to demos." He refused.

I suggested to Shakeel that he must have been tempted by the prospect of a job and a wife – he was unlikely ever to get such a good opportunity again. He looked shy and covered his face with his hands.

"I want to marry a non-Muslim woman and convert her to Islam."

Why? I asked.

In a moment that might have come straight out of the Borat film, he answered in a soft, serious voice: "I have been told that if I can convince a non-Muslim woman to marry me – but not convert her by force – then there will be a place for me in heaven."

I suggested there might be some suitable candidates in Britain. "If the offer comes," Shakeel said, "I am ready to accept it." [...]